


Christmas Present Past

by Dustbunnygirl



Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M, We-Are-Torchwood Holiday Exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-02
Updated: 2017-01-02
Packaged: 2018-09-14 07:56:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9169534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dustbunnygirl/pseuds/Dustbunnygirl
Summary: Just to be safe, I'll warn for spoilers for the entirety of Seasons 1 and 2 and Children of Earth.Two years after Jack leaves Earth, a Christmas vortex manipulator accident lands him back in Cardiff, and in The Hub.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [janto-owns-my-soul](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=janto-owns-my-soul).



Christmas is always different after. After they lost Owen and Toshiko. After the 456. After Jack lost everything. He tries to forget the holiday ever existed. It should be easy, bouncing through space, moving from planet to planet, time to time, visiting worlds where Santa Claus and candy canes and red-nosed reindeer mean nothing. Where December 25th can come and go on a tiny marble, galaxies away, without it ever crossing his mind. 

He is so very wrong.

Like clockwork, an ache settles in his chest, followed by a bleak mood he can’t shake. He tries to drown it in alcohol and sex and a bar fight or two. He dies a half a dozen times, sometimes in those fights, sometimes by choice, welcoming the momentary bliss of oblivion. It always hurts, no matter the time or place. Will always hurt, because he can never, ever, forget any of them. But it’s always harder at Christmas.

The fourth Christmas after, Jack gets very drunk, and very maudlin, but not enough of the former to keep him from operating a vortex manipulator under the influence. One minute he’s in a 43rd Century brothel on a planet he can’t even pronounce, the next he’s falling onto bare concrete from a painful, if not fatal, height. The hypervodka dulls the ache in his head when it bounces off the floor; it dulls several other aches, too, and he’s pretty sure he might have at least bruised a rib. Broken, possibly, but he’s not a doctor. He laughs to himself as he rolls over to stare up at the ceiling. 

“Story of my life,” he says on a groan. “Never a Doctor around when I need one.” 

He doesn’t move at first; just lays there, staring at the fuzzy view overhead. The longer he stares, landmarks start to take shape – the slowly closing hole in the ceiling, the babbling fountain that disappears up through the gap and into the night sky above. As his vision begins to clear, he sees a winged shape glide past, giving a shrill squawk. Slowly, Jack sits up, one arm braced around his middle against the pain there. As he expects – and dreads – the invisible lift platform hovers a few feet away, a good four feet from the ground. 

“I’m in Torchwood.” 

“Of course you are, sir.” The familiar voice, deep and Welsh and mildly amused, makes Jack’s breath catch. He swears his heart stops. His throat goes dry and he can feel a sob building deep in his chest. If everything didn’t hurt, he’d swear he’s dreaming. Again. 

He turns slowly and not because of the soreness in his middle. He’s almost afraid if he moves too fast, it will all be some hallucination brought on by the alcohol and the head trauma and disappear the minute he lays eyes on it. Ianto Jones is standing ten feet away in an unbuttoned waistcoat and rolled shirtsleeves and sock feet peeking out of the cuffs of his trousers. His hair is mussed; it is, as Jack well knows, a standard example of quintessential Ianto bedhead. Jack knows it well, though there were usually less clothes involved when he saw it. It’s been two years, and he remembers nothing so clearly as the sight of Ianto’s mussed head lying on his own chest.

Well, that’s not entirely true. There’s another image even more prevalent, but it’s the one he usually tries to pickle his brain in booze to forget. 

“You shouldn’t be here.” Jack directs the words at Ianto, but he might just mean himself. Does, in fact. Wherever – whenever – he is, he shouldn’t be. 

“Someone needs to monitor things, and since Owen’s not answering his mobile and Gwen’s invited Toshiko ‘round to hers and Rhys’ for dinner. And you…” He waves a hand in Jack’s general direction. “Sending him off in style, were you?”

Jack blinks. He tries to sort through a list of potential “hims” he might “send off,” but his mental library is soaked in hypervodka. But his brain catches on Owen’s name, and Toshiko’s, and Gwen’s. He notices the low hum of music in the background now that the ringing has lessened in his head. Christmas music. Christmas, 2007. Gwen, missing young Emma Cowell after having grown too attached; Owen, heartbroken after losing Diane Holmes in her attempt to return to her own time; Jack, similarly distraught after John Ellis’ decision to take his own life. And then there was Ianto, just months past the death of his fiancee, Lisa. His first Christmas after losing her for the last time, something Jack had missed entirely the first time through.

“Why aren’t you at your sister’s?” Jack tries to stand and fails, sinking back against the lift’s base.

Ianto is at his side in a moment, hauling him up with as much difficulty as a drunk’s dead weight can cause. “As I said, someone has to – “

“You can’t hide down here forever.” Jack grunts as the younger man hefts him up by the armpits and tucks himself into his side. “Not healthy.”

Ianto laughs. “A lecture on health by the bloke who tumbled off a lift drunk.” 

Despite himself, Jack chuckles. “Maybe the blow to the head knocked a little sense into me.”

“Would take just about that…” 

This time, it’s a laugh; a laugh that will definitely hurt later. “There’s the sweet disposition I’ve been missing.” 

“Been missing it for the whole three hours since you left, have you?” They make it to the couch in the break room and Ianto dumps Jack, unceremoniously, onto it. Jack doesn’t mean to take the Welshman down with him, but he’s two kinds of clumsy at the moment and they end up tangled up in each other’s arms and legs, Ianto pinned too temptingly beneath the Captain. Just like every other time, he looks into those eyes and gets completely, utterly lost. It’s been two years, and these eyes have haunted him each and every day of them.

“Felt a lot longer than that,” he says, and cuts off all further conversation with a kiss. 

There are protests – weak reminders of a potential concussion easily swayed by well-placed drags of lips against Ianto’s throat and hands down his frantically unbuttoned shirt. He stops trying to speak in full sentences that don’t include the word “fuck” all together when those same hands are fumbling with the buttons of his fly. They’re both naked in no time; Jack’s head may be swimming, but he doesn’t need to think straight to remember all his favorite ways to make Ianto tremble and moan. He plans to use them all before the night’s through, too. He has two years to make up for, and a very long lifetime ahead of him without more of this. 

It’s almost dawn when they finally collapse, too spent to consider moving again. Ianto shifts about until Jack is flat on the couch and he can curl in against his side, his head pillowed on the captain’s shoulder. Jack is tempted – so tempted – to lean in and kiss the top of the younger man’s head, but he knows he can’t. They aren’t there yet. Are miles from those sorts of tender moments and the fact he can’t indulge in one of the things he’s missed so much makes things ache that have nothing to do with his fall. 

"Should stay awake and make sure you don’t die on me,” the Welshman says, words trailing off on a yawn. Jack chuckles and gently musses Ianto’s hair. That much he can maybe get away with.

“You know I can’t…”. He stops himself. This Ianto doesn’t know about his immortality yet. Hasn’t watched him get up from a bullet to the brain care of Owen’s gun, or seen him survive Abaddon yet. “…damage this head. Too hard headed. Probably dented the concrete.”

“Likely.” Ianto yawns again. His cheek nuzzles Jack’s chest. It’s familiar behavior. Someone is moments away from falling asleep. “Still, should…”

Jack doesn’t say anything. He lets the young man fall asleep instead and waits for the slow, even breathing that means he’s far enough down to prevent waking. As soon as he’s sure Ianto is deep asleep, he slides out from under him and searches out a blanket to keep him warm. Then, he picks up his clothes and makes his way up the familiar stairs to his office.

There's a delicate balance at work here. Ianto is still picking himself up from Lisa; Jack – his Jack – hasn’t realized how much he needs the sarcastic Welshman yet. What he doesn’t need is his younger self mishandling the situation he’ll walk into in about an hour. Jack remembers how this day goes. He drags himself into the office, only free from a hangover because he’s not yet sober, and locks himself in his lofty tower until well past one. The only person who manages to achieve entry is Ianto, and it’s mostly the coffee Jack’ll be interested in. The worst thing Jack – present Jack – can do is act like the night that just happened didn’t.

Paper and pen are just where he remembers. He sits stiffly in his chair and scribbles out a mostly coherent note to himself. No point in wasting time explaining the hows. He’s a Time Agent no matter which version of him he is, some time travel isn’t exactly uncommon. Crossing his own timeline and having to leave himself an explanation isn’t either, really, and he’s pretty sure the Doctor would have a lot of really loud words on the topic, too. What he also doesn’t take the time explaining is the why. No man should ever no too much about his own future, after all. 

When the letter is done, he slumps back in the chair and stares at it, pen still in hand. He’s trying to remind himself why the Doc Brown maneuver is a bad idea. It’s so tempting to include a warning; there’s a P.S. beneath his signature before he can even stop himself. His hand actually shakes with the effort not to tell himself to leave Ianto behind when the day comes that he goes to confront the 456. To send his grandson far, far away and let someone else’s child be sacrificed to save the world. To stop Owen from getting shot at the Pharm or dying in a nuclear meltdown. To stop John Hart from shooting Toshiko so that she dies in Jack’s arms. To spare himself all this pain and loss. It would be so easy…

He hears the entry alarm sound down below and knows he’s run out of time. He scratches off a quick, innocuous postscript, then punches in the return code on the vortex manipulator so it will take him back to the moment he left. He’s gone before the other Jack, the proper Jack, stumbles through his office door. All that’s left behind is the note, prominently displayed in the center of his blotter.

_“Jack –_

_Remember that brothel on Prima 6? Both times? Similar situation here. (Have to quit drunk dialing our former selves, right?) If Ianto brings up a very enthusiastic night of break room couch sex, be assured that he is not hallucinating and that, yes, it was just that good. Just smile and nod, once your head can stand the nodding part._

_I’d say Merry Christmas, but I’m the one that got the present. So, thanks?_

_-Also Jack_

_P.S. Don’t take any of them for granted. You’re the only one who can’t die.”_


End file.
